


Benedictions

by wargoddess



Series: The Templar Canticles [3]
Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age II
Genre: Disassociation, M/M, Masturbation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Unrequited Love, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-01-08
Packaged: 2017-11-24 05:37:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wargoddess/pseuds/wargoddess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost-Templar Keran seems fine after being tortured by blood mages for days on end.  He's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Benedictions

     When Keran hears that Meredith is dead and Cullen has assumed control of the Gallows, he feels hope again.  It's been a long time.  Even so, he does not act on this hope.  He's had hope before, after all.  Thrask had been kind to him, pulling him aside when his hands shook in the middle of sword practice; giving him light duty on those days when he was exhausted from the previous night's bloody dreams.  It was not conscience which had driven Keran to Thrask's quiet rebellion; certainly not, with the scars of mages' cruelty barely scabbed in his soul.  It was simply the fact that he would have followed Thrask anywhere, and done anything for him.  Anything, if Thrask had only asked.

     But Thrask is dead -- terribly, cruelly dead, in a manner that is somehow worse than what Tarohne put Keran through because of the added taint of betrayal.  And... and... it is hard to trust.  Cullen is a good man, Keran remembers:  harsh, but not cruel.  Kind in his own way.

     It is hard to believe in someone new.

     Then he comes home one day to find Macha red-eyed at the kitchen table, a small pile of gold sitting in front of her, and she will not tell him where she got it.  It's been hard lately; Keran is too kind-faced to be much of a mercenary.  They've eaten a lot of cabbage soup, and the nights have been cold with no money for firewood, but it hasn't been so bad, has it?  But Macha is the one who handles the money for the household, she knows the real story, and now she has a job she will not discuss and there is a bite-mark visible on her neck just above the collar, though he can see she's tried to put powder over it.  She's a pretty girl, his big sister.  And the Rose pays extra, it is said, for humans.

     He goes back to the Gallows the next day.

     The new Knight Captain remembers him, Keran sees with horror; he is the Champion's brother, whom Thrask ordered kidnapped once upon a time.  Awake, unbound, the man is far more intimidating than Keran remembers; was he always so big?  Did he always carry that massive sword?  And there is that something in his face which Keran remembers from his few meetings with the Champion:  a rigidity, a kind of emotional brutality, that leaves Keran both nervous and in awe.  This is a man who is not driven by principle, like Thrask.  He is simply a man who knows who he is and what belongs to him, and everything of himself is bent toward protecting everything he cares for.

     It is something Keran understands.  So he humbles himself before this man whom he has wronged.  He begs to return, and to be good, and he apologizes for what Thrask did even though Thrask would never, but the dead do not have sisters to keep safe --

     The Knight Captain cuts him off with a sharp gesture.  "I don't care about that.  You were willing to work with mages before, right?  Even after what they did to you.  You still willing?  You know they turned on Thrask."

     Keran flinches, and the Knight Captain notices. 

     "We're partners," the Knight Captain says softly.  "Not overseers.  Mages don't want to be eaten by demons.  Most of 'em just want to live their lives, as normally as they can.  So we help them toward that goal, because that's good for everybody.  If you can't do that anymore, you don't belong here."

     So Keran speaks the truth, because it is his last chance.  "Mages terrify me," he admits.  "I know it's wrong.  I know they're people, some good, some bad, same as everyone else... but."  Thrask writhing in the air, his face constricted in agony as his life force is ripped away as the fuel for evil.  Tarohne's toxic quicksilver smile.  He shudders and knows that the Knight Captain sees this, too.

     "Just mages?"  The Knight Captain's gaze is too shrewd, too hard, and -- and his eyes are the same color as Thrask's.  _Exactly_ the same; Keran is distracted from his own misery by the realization.  Though he flinches again when the man says, "You had some trouble with a woman at the Rose too, as I recall; got a problem with all women, now?"

     He does, actually.  So many things frighten him these days.  But he speaks the truth again.  "I want to be better, ser."

     It is this sentence which saves him.  The Knight Captain folds his arms, considering, and then he says, "You'll work with the older apprentices -- the ones almost ready for the Harrowing.  Get to know them.  Your word will help determine whether they're Harrowed or made Tranquil."

     It is both a benediction and a punishment.  Keran does not know what to feel.  "Thank you, ser," he says, not really meaning it.  The Knight Captain -- Hawke -- sees that too, with his deep Thrask eyes.

     "Thank me if it helps," he says, gesturing toward the quartermaster who is watching from across the Gallows courtyard.  Then Hawke looks at him, hard and cold and not like Thrask at all.  "Lots of Templars, they get scared of mages.  They start doing things to make themselves feel less scared, yeah?  You were here during Alrik's time."

     Keran did not see -- he was just a recruit -- but Thrask spoke often, bitterly, of the things Alrik did.  He nods.

     "My brother killed Alrik.  Caught him in the act."  He speaks so casually, this Knight Captain, of an apostate murdering a Templar.  "If he hadn't done it, I would've.  You get how things work here, now?"

     This man is not Thrask.  Thrask was a good man; Keran's not sure Hawke is.  But he says, anyway, "Yes, ser."

     "Good.  Go get kitted out, and report to the practice yard.  We'll see if merc work's made you soft."

     Keran obeys, wondering how much of a mistake he's made.

#

     But things _are_ different, he realizes as he settles in.  Better.

     In the recruit barracks, there is none of the sort of joking that made Keran so uneasy before -- about how weak mages are, how soft, how inferior.  How well they bend the knee when pressed.  How readily they open their mouths or lift their robes, when asked.  How good it feels to make them cry, or bleed, or whisper _please, no more_.  There are some of the older knights -- even a few from Keran's first recruit-year -- who remember those days; Keran can see the taint in them at a glance.  But all these recruits are new, and clean.  He stays with them.

     These recruits speak openly of the mages in their lives:  sisters, cousins, best friends, children.  Not all of those mages are in the Circle.  There is an unspoken code to this; no one asks where they are, and the speakers do not tell.  It is the new Knight Commander's way:  every Templar must decide for him or herself how to deal with the threat of magic.  The cause is not always served by caging the best of magekind.

     And in the apprentice halls, Keran sees mages -- people -- not much younger than or different from himself.  They laugh and make jokes too, sometimes even about Templars, sometimes even when Keran and his fellows stand there watching.  But the jokes are tempered by respect, not tinged with fear.  And in between the jokes he sees these young mages fretting over lovers' tokens returned or the news contained in a parent's letter, or weeping with frustration when they cannot master a difficult skill.  He catches several of them roaming the floor at night -- not doing anything illicit, just afraid of their dreams.  He knows, he knows, he _knows_ what that feels like.  So he reprimands them as he must, but then he adds, "It's harder if you don't sleep.  You have to stay strong to face them."

     And they blink at him, and sometimes they cry, and he realizes he no longer feels ashamed of showing simple compassion.

     He wishes Thrask were here to see this newer, saner Gallows.

     On his first off-day, he brings his wages to Macha, and she holds the purse to her breast and weeps as he holds her close.  She sounds a lot like those mages, he thinks.  Her nights of late must have been sleepless, too.

#

     Keran gets better, in some ways.  His shieldwork improves; the Knight Captain commends him on it.  The sight of glowing hands no longer makes his stomach churn.  Beyond that, though, there are barriers.

     The other recruits don't mind how quiet he is.  There are whispers, of course.  They know he quit because of Meredith, and that he was involved in Thrask's insurrection.  They don't know everything.  The mages think he's just shy when he flinches away from their friendly overtures.  When he politely turns down the other recruits' invitations to go with them to the Rose, they think he's devout.  The women giggle that it's cute, and maybe attractive.  The men say it's admirable that he's so chaste.

     He isn't chaste.  While they're gone, and he's in the barracks alone, he takes himself in hand and works his cock until it's raw.  He spills into a handkerchief, then gets up to rinse it out, then goes back to his bunk and does it again.  His balls ache by the end of the night; he thinks they might be overworked, if that can happen.  He supposes it can. The knight who oversees the practice yard comments favorably on his strong grip in swordwork.  "Surely the Maker guides _your_ hand," the man says, and Keran has to fight hysterical giggles whenever this happens.

     He cannot think of women's bodies.  The demons used those against him too often in Tarohne's prison, and his own mind uses them against him in his dreams.  Soft, ripe breasts and curving, canted hips are weapons, and though they still work against him, he will not choose the enemy's way when he is awake and in control of himself.  Men's bodies are better:  strong and lean, smooth-skinned and hard.  He covets them; their beauty is safe.  But he has learned control from the demons.  When he comes into the communal baths, he smiles at his brother-Templars and they do not blush or look away uncomfortably.  He watches them stretch and bend and even tease each other over a moment of undue excitement, without ever experiencing the same where they can see.  He can channel it away.  He can be somewhere else.  And later, alone in the barracks, he can bring those memories out and toy with them, slow and rhythmic.  He can savor them with his fingers in his mouth, like a salty, sucking sweet.

     And then it changes.  The joking in the barracks one evening focuses on an event:  Recruit Harald has done something stupid, Keran did not hear or care what, and the Knight Captain has taken him to the Knight Commander for discipline.  "Ooh," says Recruit Genevieve, "Mommy _and_ Daddy are in on it?  Now there's trouble."

     "Not when Daddy's nicer than Mommy," says Recruit Chastain, who shudders a bit.  "Heard the Captain almost knocked Harald right out, he was so pissed."

     "Daddy's not nice," says Genevieve, sobering.  "If he's involved, that means Harald's likely get cashiered.  Stupid arse.  His own damn fault."

     Chastain shrugs.  "Well, at least Daddy's likely to calm Mommy down, after, and it's good for all of us when Mommy's not on a tear."  He chuckles.  "Man's got balls of dragonbone, the Knight Commander does.  Dunno how _I'd_ do, trying to pet that cat."

     "Cat?  Mountain lion, morelike!  One slash and your head's gone -- "

     And then there is a spate of animals being called out, each worse than before, all somehow meant to encompass the terrifying coiled threat that is the Gallows' Knight Captain.  They settle on high dragon, but only because Cullen must be an Archdemon, and they can't think of anything worse.

     Keran is lying in the top bunk and has been drifting toward sleep; finally he turns his head to join the conversation.  It's just jokes, but...  "Mommy and Daddy?" he asks.

     Genevieve grins.  "Oh, you didn't know?  They're together, the Commander and the Captain.  _Together_ together.  Sharing quarters and everything."

     For a moment Keran thinks of Meredith and Cullen, and the idea is ludicrous.  But it's also ludicrous to think of Cullen with anyone else -- especially Carver Hawke.  He remembers Cullen -- _Knight Captain_ Cullen -- as being in truth what Keran pretends to be:  upstanding, righteous, focused, brave.  Chaste.  And more than once he remembers seeing Hawke, back when he was merely Ser Hawke, at the Rose.

It is intriguing, though. They are men who fear nothing; they have no weaknesses. What is that like? What are they like, together?

     "Why's the Captain 'Mommy'?" he asks, because he cannot reconcile the feminine label with the Knight Captain in his mind.  Though he knows well that women can be terrifying, Hawke is so far from a woman that it just makes no sense.

     "Rumor has it he prefers the, uh, _receptive_ role," says Genevieve, though she is immediately contradicted by three other recruits who have heard the exact opposite.  She concludes, "And anyway, it's the Commander who's in charge, right?  Head of the household, and all.  So he's Daddy."

     "They're professional about it," says Recruit Eurydice, shrugging.  "Almost never see them in the same room, let alone snogging or anything.  The Commander's off doing business in the city most days.  They keep the rest behind closed doors."

     "Yeah, but the doors are _thin_ ," says Chastain, leaning forward and grinning.  "Sessily says she heard 'em once!  She was on messenger duty, see, and she went to the door of the Commander's quarters to slip under a note, and they were _against_ the door, going at it all hardlike!  She said the Captain was saying _harder, harder oh fuck, please_ , and the Commander wasn't saying _anything_ , but then the door started to bang like it was gonna come off its hinges, and she got out of there and went straight to the Rose because _holy fuck_."  And he fans himself in mock sympathy.  Everyone laughs. 

     Keran chuckles too.  But he rolls onto his back, and lies there thinking, and when the lights go out he slides his hand down into his smalls and pulls the pillow over his face and spends in seconds, shuddering as quietly as he can.

#

     He finds himself staring at the Knight Captain, all the next day.  When the Knight Captain's head swivels toward him, hard blue eyes hitting like a slap, Keran quickly looks away.

#

     A few days later, he's in the yard when the Knight Commander strides up from the ferry, chatting companionably with the Captain of the City Guard.  Keran watches them pass, surreptitiously.  Cullen looks a little older and as tired as ever, but his shoulders are still unbowed and his stride is as Keran remembers:  measured, bold, his posture upright and dignified.  The Commander's gorget looks good on him.

     Cullen glances around the courtyard as he walks, probably old habit, and his eyes catch on Keran.  He blinks in surprise, then smiles in obvious pleasure; when he inclines his head, Keran snaps to attention and puts his fist to his heart in return salute.

     That night everyone heads off to the Hanged Man for drinks, and Keran weeps quietly as he strokes himself again and again.

#

     It becomes an obsession.  Keran tries not to think of it during the day, but he does anyway; it gets him reprimanded several times when he makes mistakes in chores or practice or recitation of Chantry verses.  But he can't help himself.  When the Knight Captain comes through the practice yard with his predator's walk -- Keran's mates were completely right to compare the man to something huge and dangerous -- Keran cannot help watching, and wanting.  He tries to understand it and cannot.  Is it Thrask's eyes in a face that has known passion, on a body strong enough to survive a blood mage's worst?  Has his fear of women driven him so far that this man, the epitome of masculinity, is _this_ the only thing he feels safe craving?  And Cullen -- he is compassionate but not naïve, a leader who anticipates and plans for betrayal.  A different kind of strength, tested and proven where Keran himself failed.

     Or is it simply that they are alive, while Thrask is not?

     He watches for the smallest signs of closeness between them.  They are indeed professional about it.  It's visible more as a negative space than the presence of any overt affection.  When they stand together on parade-days, both resplendent in dress armor as they watch each squadron of Templars march past, there is an indefinable quality in the the unity of their focus, though they do not look at each other.  From time to time Keran sees Carver pivot to walk with Cullen as he comes up from the ferry, talking quietly as Cullen nods.  Their strides match perfectly, but their hands never touch. 

     Men who simply work together are never that attuned to one another.  It's obvious by inference.

     And then Keran learns from the other recruits that the Commander and Captain spar together, at dawn on several mornings per week.  He contrives to do dawnwatch, and further contrives to stand his watch in sight of the practice ground.  He wears his helmet when he does so, all prim and proper, and he does not let his hands twitch or his breath catch as his eyes follow the blur and clash of their movements.  The Captain is bigger and stronger, a monster on the field, but the Commander is _elegant_ , quick and innovative and determined, and their matches end in draws more often than not.  But it is the way they look at each other, one grinning in genuine pleasure after the other scores a hit, both of them bantering in half innuendo and half insult, that makes Keran tremble. 

     And one day just after a match is done, he sees the Captain start limping.  He sits down and pulls off a plate to knead the thigh underneath.  The Commander leans over him for a look too, and then he kneels, taking the Captain's leg between his hands to examine with careful fingers.  Their voices are low; Keran cannot hear what they say.  It doesn't matter.  The Commander's question is gentle, concerned.  The Captain's reply is pained, but softer than Keran has ever heard the man speak.  And then Cullen smiles and cups Carver's cheek for one moment, before helping him strap the plate back on.  When Carver stands, the limp is gone.  Then they go off to their respective duties.

     It's still early.  No one sees this moment but Keran.  He keeps the image in his head all day, trying to make it to nightfall, but he can't.  It's a torment.  He's supposed to report for inventory with the quartermaster at the third-hour bell, but instead he goes into the tower, up to one of the dead floors -- the floors that have been unused since Meredith invoked the Right of Annulment and slaughtered all the mages who once lived here.  They've been cleaned up since, the old bloody furniture taken out and burned, but there are whispers that the Veil has thinned further, and most people -- mage and Templar alike -- are afraid to linger here. 

     Keran has met demons.  Ghosts are nothing.  He doesn't care if they watch.

     So he falls to his knees in a quiet out of the way cell that probably once housed a mage who did not bend the knee or lift his robes when the Templars said, because otherwise he would've gotten a window.  There Keran huddles in a corner and yanks off his armor and Maker, he's so hard it hurts, and Maker, he tries not to, and Maker, he doesn't _want_ to, but he spits into his hands and tugs himself and imagines the Knight Commander's mouth as he does it.  He grips at the base of his cock and rolls his hand slowly upward, and it is the Knight Captain's hand which does this, so strong that of course it would hurt a little, he cannot help moaning as he forces himself to the edge of pain.  He reaches further and cups his balls, pulling them up along the shaft in an indirect stroke; he presses just beneath the head of himself with his thumbs; he arches against the stone and pants so raggedly that it is amazing the whole Gallows does not hear.  And he thinks of that warm smile, that soft rumble of reply, and he thinks --

     _Oh, Maker, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I should have been there to help you, I left and it's my fault you died, with you I could have been strong, alone I am nothing --_

     And then he cries out because his whole body has locked in a spasm and the world is rocking lose and not even the demons ever made him come this hard.

     When the spasms pass, he cries a little.  That doesn't help much.  He hates himself a lot.  That doesn't help either.

     He pulls himself back together, slowly.

     The quartermaster shouts at Keran when he arrives half an hour late, and again when he is sluggish and stupid for the rest of the day.

#

     The Knight Captain has an office, but he does not sit at the chair behind it.  (Keran suspects the chair has never been used.)  Instead he leans back against the desk, arms folded, regarding Keran steadily and without blinking.

     "I don't know what to do with you, recruit," he says at last.  "I can see the potential in you.  So can the Knight Commander.  He was right to keep you after that whole mess with the blood mages, and you were right to leave rather than serve Meredith's madness.  But I'm beginning to wonder whether I was right to give you a second -- third -- chance."

     Is he in real trouble?  Keran wonders.  Mommy is unhappy.  Keran tries to remember his own mother and cannot; there is only Macha.  Macha, who will go back to the Rose if Keran loses this position again.

     He tries to focus.

     "Want to tell me what's happening, with you?"  The Knight Captain is not a nice man.  There's almost no kindness in him, not like Thrask had.  Yet he is trying now, and for that Keran is grateful.

     "I... don't know, ser," he tries.  What can he say that will save him?  It must be the truth.  The Captain deserves that much.  "I just... can't think straight, anymore.  I try, but -- "

     _but then I think of fucking you, of being fucked by you, I think of what it would like to never be afraid again because I have you, because I'm not alone_

     " -- I don't know, ser.  I just feel... confused."

     The Knight Captain sighs and falls silent for a long while.  Keran stares at his mouth and tries not to salivate.  When the Knight Captain speaks again, Keran twitches a little.

     "Cullen went through... something like this," he says, very softly.  "Did you know that?"

     What?  "What, ser?"

     Carver shifts uncomfortably.  "You heard what happened at the Circle in Ferelden?  At Kinloch Hold?"

     Does Mommy ever fuck Daddy?  Keran wonders, and then the shame of this thought almost makes him crumple.  He must think of other things.  Focus.  The Knight Captain has asked him a question.  He remembers something about Kinloch, and a Right of Annulment, and --

     "Yes, ser."

     "Cullen was there when it happened."  Carver looks away.  Is this hard for him?  Why?  Keran cannot imagine a man like this ever being uneasy.  "The blood mages.  They... took him, imprisoned him.  Killed his mates.  And then they kept him alive, flogging him through Maker knows how many waking nightmares -- "

     Nightmares?  Keran blinks, finally hearing what the man is saying.

     " -- again and again and again."  Carver's hands flex, once, into fists.  Keran feels sorry for whatever he hits.   "It's the same thing that happened to you, except they weren't secret about it.  And afterward, for awhile, Cullen... came apart a little.  Thought _every_ mage was a blood mage.  Started wanting to kill 'em all.  Tried, a couple of times, before his old commander sent him here."  He shakes his head.  " _This_ place, if you can figure it, helped him get it back together.  I guess crazy cancels out crazy, or something."

     Carver looks up then, sharply, and Keran freezes in fear.  "Everyone knows this," Carver says, his voice low and full of threat.  "It's an open secret, for people who feel like talking about it.  Most people don't.  You don't need to."

     Keran nods because seriously, the man's fists are almost as big as his head.  But he also nods because... because...  Everyone knows?  Everyone _knows_ that blood mages have been inside the Knight Commander, have picked him apart and strewn his entrails and dreams everywhere, steaming and raw for the taking?  And yet, somehow, Cullen has picked up the remains of who he was, and put them back inside himself, and gone on, holding it all in.

     It sounds impossible.  Of course Cullen has done it.

     Carver exhales and pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers.

     "So I'm going to give you a little more time," he says finally.  "Cause I figure _you've_ come apart a little, maybe you've _been_ that way all along and I just didn't see it before, but I think... I think you can maybe pull it together.  If we still had a Chantry, I'd tell you to go talk to a priest or Reverend Mother or something.  Maybe that would help."  He shrugs.  All of Kirkwall's clergy are dead or fled from this city where so many of them were martyred.  "We got none of that, though.  You'll have to do it yourself."  He looks up.  "So you're on probation, Recruit Keran.  I'm giving you six months, do or die.  Get your shit together and I'll rescind Cullan's ten-year interdiction against your knighthood, knock it down to time served; it's obvious by now that the only demons in you are the ones you've made for yourself.  Or you're out.  You got it?  Knight or nothing."

     It's... Keran blinks.  A real chance.  His head feels clear for the first time in... he cannot remember.  He swallows.  "I- I got it, ser."

     Carver nods, curtly.  Then he straightens and salutes, and Keran salutes back, automatically.  "Dismissed," says Carver, and Keran goes.

#

     A real chance.  A real chance.  A real chance.

     The Knight Captain is right; something's wrong with him.  He's sick inside.  He is afraid of everything, attached to nothing, floating around in his own head, just plain broken.  But how can he repair himself?

     Keran wants things he cannot have.  He wants to understand things that are not his to know.  He sees, now, that what he wants is not the Knight Commander, or the Knight Captain.  They are beautiful men, strong men, the sort of men he _should_ want, but they are not his for the taking.  He wanted Thrask too, but Thrask was wedded to the cause that killed him; there is no shame in losing out to such a rival.  Yet it is all tied together in Keran:  striving and wanting, believing and lusting, fear and sex, and he does not know how to unravel the knot.

     He heads back to the barracks, and lies on the bunk thinking while his comrades gossip.

     " -- so spooky up there," Genevieve is saying, with a shudder.  "They should at least let us have a partner so we don't have to patrol alone.  It'll be years before we've enough mages to move onto the dead floors again."

     "I know," Eurydice commiserates.  "I could swear I heard a moan, one time I was up there."

     Chastain laughs.  "Yeah, where were you?  East end?  Above the Knight Commander's apartment?  Was it Cullen's rest day?"

     Some of the others laugh.  Eurydice frowns, looking around.  "How should I know?  What?"

     "So," says Chastain, "the Knight Commander's rest days are _the Knight Captain's_ rest days, see?  And the two of them make up for lost time, whenever they can."

     More laughter.  Keran licks his lips, and his hand drifts toward his crotch.  Then he sets his jaw and moves his hand away.

     In the morning he asks around.  Cullen's rest days come every six days.  There's one coming up soon.

     Keran volunteers to patrol the dead floors for the next few days, since nobody else likes doing it.  The watch commander commends him for trying to be more diligent.

#

     On his own rest day Keran leaves the Gallows, visits a friend in the merc company he used to work for, borrows the equipment he needs.  It's thieving stuff, espionage stuff, and the merc -- an old rogue -- is curious to know what he means to do with it.  But Keran only winks and smiles, and the merc just shakes his head and offers him a few tips. There's good money in secrets, the old man advises, if Keran can capture any good ones.  And if he doesn't get caught.

     It's easy to find the right spot.  At night he can hear the Commander's and Captain's voices, and he listens until they settle in one room.  On his next daytime patrol -- while they're out -- he brings the small cork borer he borrowed, pausing frequently to suck out the stone and wood dust with a straw.  (His mouth tastes of ash and filth.  No worse than his nightmares.)  Otherwise the dust would fall down into the room, and they might notice the debris and then look up and see the hole.  He gets very lucky; the hole he's drilled is near the base of the chandelier.  Right above the bed.

     On the appropriate day, Keran fakes sick at morning muster.  The watch commander sends him back to barracks and gives him the day to recover.  Instead, Keran heads to the dead floors, and quietly as he can, arranges himself above the hole.  Only when he has positioned himself so that he won't need to move -- if certain urges overtake him, he will _hold_ , because that's how fools get caught doing this -- does he unplug the hole, and peer through.

     Oh, _Maker_.

     Down below, the bed that is normally military-precise in its neatness is completely disordered, and occupied.  In it, Knight Captain Carver is fucking Knight Commander Cullen.  It's... not what Keran thought it would be.  Carver is so big, so harsh; Cullen is so commanding and unflinching.  He had expected... he's not sure.  The unstoppable force and the immovable object.  The barbarian at the gate, the beast fighting its master, blood and tears on the floor.  Instead --

     Instead, it's gentle.  Cullen lies on his belly amid tumbled sheets; Carver sits on his knees, straddling his hips.  The Commander's head is turned to one side, his arms stretched out and up, his body utterly relaxed although it moves beneath Carver's steady rhythm.  Maybe there's a pillow under his hips; the angle is wrong for Keran to see.  He's not clear on how logistics work, between men.  Well, he _wasn't_ clear; the angle is perfect for seeing Carver's cock, thick and glistening with oil as it glides steadily in and out of Cullen's body.  It looks like it should hurt.  It's obvious that it doesn't.  In fact, as Carver's hands caress Cullen's back, drawing a slow circuit of thumbs up his spine and palms down his flanks and back again, Keran thinks:  _how soothing_.  A massage inside and out. It looks as though they've been at it for hours.

     "Good?"  The Knight Captain's voice is so soft, here in this place where he may be soft.  With this person who allows him to be soft.

     "Wondrous."  Cullen's voice is breathy, but otherwise normal.  "More."

     Carver chuckles.  "Greedy."  But he shifts forward, propping his upper body on his hands, stretching out his legs.  His hips do not slow; Keran is fascinated by the undulating flex of the long muscles in his back.  For a while they make no sound, other than Carver's soft breaths, but it is obvious that something about the new angle has changed the sensation for Cullen.  His hand, which had been relaxed on the rumpled sheets, tightens slowly into a fist, and his breath comes harder.  Now and again he twitches.

     Carver leans down, speaking against the back of his head.  There's no other sound, so Keran hears it well enough.  "You all right?"

     Cullen groans a little.  "Maker, yes."

     "You with me?"  Carver kisses his way across Cullen's shoulders, licks away a drop of sweat, before pushing himself up again.

     "Always."

     And that's it for dirty talk.  After awhile, Carver shudders visibly and shifts to his elbows, pressing his face against the back of Cullen's head.  He moves no faster, but there is that imperceptible sense of rising urgency nevertheless.  Maybe he's breathing harder, though that could simply be the exertion of all this fucking; Keran would've long since gotten tired if he'd been the one --  Well.  He keeps watching.

     (He doesn't know what he wants to see.  He doesn't know why he's doing this.  He just knows that he needs to.)

     Carver's strong enough to support himself on one arm, so he does this and runs the other hand up and down, up and down Cullen's side.  That soothing gesture again.  Why?  When Cullen utters the softest of moans -- Keran barely hears it -- Carver slides this hand underneath him.  The muscles in his arm work, the same steady flex as his hips, and Cullen shudders all over.  His eyes open, glazed; above them his brow is furrowed.  Then Carver's head passes over his.  There is the sound of a kiss, a murmur that Keran does not catch.  When Carver moves away, the frown is gone and only pleasure is left in Cullen's face.  That pleasure tightens, tightens; he is shaking all over, breathing harder, hands fisted, no longer relaxed.  He makes a quick, urgent sound.

     "Almost there?" breathes Carver.  The man is phenomenally strong, though Keran can see him dripping sweat onto Cullen's back.  "Yeah.  I've got you.  Andraste's _arse_ you feel good -- "  He puts his face against the back of Cullen's shoulder for a moment, shuddering, obviously fighting for control.  He speaks in a rush and a groan.  "I've got you, Maker, so good, I've got you.  Not letting go, right?  Right here."

     Cullen makes that sound again, raising his head; his eyes have gone vague and wild, and something like fear is suddenly in his face.  "Carver?  Are you -- are you real?  Oh, Andraste, please be real."

     Keran goes very still.

     "Yeah."  Carver shudders all over, and his voice skirls higher, louder.  "Oh, _fuck_ , I'm --  I'm real, I'm right here, I'm _right fucking here_ , can't you feel me?"  He thrusts harder, just a few quick slaps but enough to prove that he could do so much more, he could hold Cullen down and hammer him into the mattress, the beast is within him but he chooses not to unleash it.  Cullen cries out anyway and puts his head down, and all of a sudden he jerks all over and Carver groans out, his voice ragged, "Only me.  You know -- you know what's real, Cullen, you know me, you know I'll never -- ohfuck ohMaker, please I, I'll never -- "

     And then he loses it, throwing back his head to utter a hoarse shout as his body stiffens and his hips grind and all his muscles shake with the force of whatever he feels.  Then they both grow utterly still, but for the occasional tremor.  It's beautiful, even from up here, even with Cullen almost hidden from view beneath Carver's larger frame, even as Keran realizes belatedly that he is not aroused at all.  Why isn't he?  He should be.  He doesn't understand it, but he's glad.  This isn't something that should be sullied by his demons.  It is wholesome and right and real, and the want that he feels is not covetous.  What he wants is not _them_ , but what they have.

     Below, the tremors cease.  It seems to take a long time.  Carver moves again, just a few lazy thrusts because he can, and then he stops.  They breathe together awhile and melt apart slowly.  Carver kisses the middle of Cullen's back; Cullen is relaxed again, his eyes shut, catching his breath or perhaps falling asleep.  There's a basin on the nightstand, with a cloth beside it.  Carver sits up, straddling Cullen's hips, and begins to mop him clean.  Keran marvels at his stamina.

     "Still with me?" he asks, as he cleans himself.  Cullen chuckles a little, but when his eyes open, they are serious.  He nods.

     "Good," says Carver; "good."  Then the sweat and oil and other things are gone, and Carver throws the cloth on the floor and flops down beside him, exhausted at last.  Cullen moves this time, shifting until they are spooned together, two long curves of scarred skin.  He takes Carver's arm and pulls it over himself like a blanket; Carver makes a pleased sound against his neck.  A moment later they are both asleep.

     Keran waits until he's sure they won't hear, and then he carefully replaces the plug of stone he sawed out, seals it with putty, and does the same with the plug of floor-wood that covered it.  Then he heads back to the barracks, where he lies awake in his bunk for the rest of the day.  When the other recruits come in after finishing their duties, they remark that he's looking better.  The sickness, whatever it was, seems to have passed.

#

     Keran gets himself together.  It's hard and slow, and sometimes he backslides.  He's late a few times, but not enough to violate his probation.  He daydreams, but never when it's important.  He still jerks off to thoughts of his fellow Templars, and occasionally thoughts of the prettier mages.  That's not so bad, because at least some of them are probably jerking off to thoughts of him.  Somehow that makes it fair.

     And one day when he's in the baths half-watching Chastain, he belatedly notices that Chastain is half-watching him.  He likes Chastain, who is Rivaini and tall and lean, and whose laugh is soft and rich, like velvet.  So this time Keran does not make his smile "just friendly"; he does not look away in pretended disinterest.  When Chastain ducks his eyes shyly and gets out of the bath, Keran can't follow.  He'll have to wait awhile, or the others will tease him. 

     He's not sure what to think.  It's the first time he's wanted anyone who actually wanted him back.  But the next time everyone goes off to the Rose, he kind of hopes Chastain stays behind so they can talk.

     The fear never goes away.  Keran's just learning to endure it without breaking.

     After six months, Knight Captain Carver leads him into a small and shadowed aft court, and there on the flagstones amid flowers and ferns he is bidden to kneel before a statue of Andraste.  For the whole night Keran kneels there trembling, praying a little, remembering, mourning.

     The next morning, Knight Commander Cullen comes, gravely offering Keran his hands to help him to his feet.  "We who are bound by the Maker's will," he says, the ritual words; "we who stand between that He has created and all which would sully it; we who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter -- "

     And then Cullen stops.  His mouth quirks a little, and his tired eyes grow warm.  "Or if we do falter," he adds, while Keran blinks at this deviation, "we _get back up_."

     Keran shudders all over, and his hands clench convulsively on Cullen's before he makes himself relax.  His eyes ache, but he blinks and swallows and reminds himself that this is real, because real is something one perceives with the heart, not just the eyes or ears or skin.  Real is what you take and make your own.  So he draws in a deep breath, and stands up straight.

     Knight Commander Cullen nods once, in approval.

     "We welcome you," he finishes, "Knight and fortitude of the Order:  Ser Keran."

**Author's Note:**

> Before he was retconned in the second game, the first game implied that Cullen basically went ax crazy after the events at Kinloch Hold. I'm really glad they didn't leave it at that, because Cullen's a great character... but I also never liked the idea that he suffered no long-term repercussions of being mind-raped and seeing his friends tortured to death. I'm thinking that by this point in his life Cullen has mostly dealt with the issue -- but Keran, who went through the exact same thing, probably hasn't. I figure he tried to, by participating in Thrask's rebellion, but that didn't exactly work out well for everyone. And since Keran's particular demons, literally, were affiliated with lust, I thought I could explore his now-festering wounds in a kinky-creepy way.
> 
> And dammit, I said I wasn't gonna write any more fic for awhile. This shit is addictive. -_-


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